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CyberEye

Want secure BYOD? Hire only rich retirees

The growing use of mobile devices for work has raised the profile of mobile security to new heights in government. Whether agency-issued or personally owned, network access for these devices must be managed and the security of the device itself must be assured.

A recent survey on password usage for the security company ESET by Harris Interactive suggests some guidelines for mobile security: Allow the devices to be used only by old, rich married people.

According to the results of the survey, the more stable and economically secure a person is, the more likely he or she will use a strong or complex password. The survey queried 2,129 U.S. adults about how they use passwords. Those most likely to use passwords containing letters, numerals and symbols are:

Age 55 or older, 89 percent

Married, 89 percent

Those with the highest incomes, 89 percent

Single users under the age of 35 are the least likely to use complex passwords, at 77 percent. Other measures of password security followed similar patterns.

Feel free to take these results with a grain of salt, however. Overall, the number of people who claimed to use strong passwords was 84 percent. Based on personal experience, this seems awfully high. I know that I never use a complex password unless forced to. I believe it’s more likely that either a lot of applications are requiring strong passwords, or a lot of people are, well, lying.